Cinderella’s Revenge (2024)

The Score: 2 stepsiblings stuck in a dryer out of 10

Where to watch: VOD platforms now, Walmart bargain bin in a week

Faster than you can say, “what are you doing, stepsis?” Cinderella uses her fairy godmother to seek bloody vengeance on her abusive stepfamily.

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The tl;dr Review:

Not that I particularly cared for the original story, or the Disney adaptation, or any other adaptations since then, but Cinderella’s Revenge is the equivalent of one of those parody horrific parody films of yesteryear, minus the accidental comedic undertones. It tries too hard in its approach, despite its low budget and obvious other limitations.

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The Review:

You can tell a VOD release week is slow when the only new film available is a film where the entire wardrobe is from either Value Village or Walmart.

The intro almost had me fooled though. Using a song I’ve actually heard playing on a store radio and a flashy opening credits sequence, was definitely a deceptive choice. 

Unfortunately the rest of Cinderella’s Revenge is a paint-by-numbers revenge film. An excess of eye straining blue and loud orange, with budget choices that are questionable at best and terribly misguided at worst, and characters that lack depth, including main character Cinderella.

You can already tell what I’m going to say about the writing. It’s subpar, with a story that doesn’t know what it wants to be, and characters who have no definite personalities, aside from a few instances of cliche. There’s no real guidance or sense of purpose here, and it weakly follows its formulaic revenge story without actually building on much of anything.

The acting isn’t merely bad, it’s atrocious. Underwhelming, excessively melodramatic, and always lacking. While Natasha Henstridge does fine as the fairy godmother, her performance isn’t enough to make it worth enduring the rest of the cast. 

Visually, there isn’t much here either. An excess of overwhelming blue filter and loudly ugly orange filter during night scenes and a rather bland and lifeless lighting through the day scenes makes for an ugly combo of both. Scenes meant to have suspense are lacking due to mediocre cinematography, and the few instances of bloody violence have far too little blood and violence. The wardrobe was very obviously acquired from cheap sources. The couple instances of actual mansion scenes are almost nice, until they reveal how little effort is placed into making them seem any bit grand.

There’s a generic suspense fare soundtrack, with the absolute bare minimum in effort to make it pair with scenes. Sound effects have the generic dullness you’d expect from a film where the budget was placed in all the wrong areas.

If you somehow survived through this absolute trainwreck of a revenge horror parody that wasn’t sure what to do with itself, then congratulations. If you haven’t fired the trigger, then maybe don’t, or at least wait until Cinderella’s Revenge ends up on whichever streaming service decides to add it.

-Joseph